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Continued from the ADSI Home Page:
I was born in Wroclaw, Poland in October 1958. My father, Morris Pietrkowski, born in 1925 in Lodz, Poland, is a
survivor of the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen and Gerlitz concentration camps. My mother, Frieda
Beker Pietrkowski, was born in January 1939 in Antwerp, Belgium and was a hidden child in Belgium. My
parents met and married in Wroclaw, Poland in June 1956. My father’s struggle to make a living in anti-Semitic,
Communist Poland after WWII led him to the decision to leave Wroclaw, Poland and bring us to Chicago in
September 1965. We settled in the East Rogers Park neighborhood in an apartment building next to Kesser
Maariv Shul on Greenview and Schreiber St. The Rabbi of the shul wanted my father to enroll my older brother
and myself in the afternoon Jewish school. My father claims that we did not want to attend the Jewish school,
thus he did not enroll us. However, there were many things we did not want to do when we were children, but were
forced to do anyway. I now believe my father did not enroll us at the Jewish School because of his own fears
that identifying us as Jews would subsequently lead to his family becoming targets for execution again.
The Holocaust (Shoah) was not talked about openly in our one-room apartment in Wroclaw, but I could feel the
monsters lurking in the walls. My father often told my older brother and myself that wild animals would come
to get us if we did not behave. I used to have terrible nightmares about enormous snakes and tigers with
gigantic teeth tearing me to pieces. Of course, my father’s monsters were the Nazis who tore apart his and my
mother’s beloved families. As a result of my sensitivity to the topic of the Holocaust, I found it impossible to
have anything to do with it without dissolving into tears of grief and rage. When I was in high school, I asked my
teachers to excuse me from watching Holocaust documentaries. These films caused me to sob uncontrollably in
class. Thankfully, the teachers were sensitive to my needs and excused me. One of my high school English
teachers told our class that when she was a young child in Germany, she was elected to present Hitler with a
bouquet of flowers at one of his rallies. She was blond and blue-eyed and looked Aryan. Somehow, word spread
that she was a Jewish child. Quickly, the flower bouquet was wrested from her hands and given to a true Aryan
child. When she told us this story, she looked so devastated and sad. Her story made an indelible impression
on me, a teenager trying to figure out my own tragic family history.
Like an addiction, I have been drawn to the topic of the Holocaust all my life. I have read a great amount of books
and enrolled in a course on the history of Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Yet, emotionally, I still cannot
understand how it was possible for the German nation to have perpetrated such a crime. The hardest part for
me to understand is the murder of more than one million Jewish children.
My mother was one of the fortunate children to survive. In March 1943, she was 4 yrs. old and her sister
was 3 months old. Their names were changed and they were hidden as Christians in Belgium. After several years
of doing family research online, I finally found out where they were hidden. My mother had only vague memories
of the places she was hidden until I told her of my findings. She and her sister were hidden in an orphanage
named Le Chateau de Dongelberg located at 1315 Incourt, Dongelberg, Belgium. Several other Jewish children
were hidden there also. Below is the link to a beautiful, true story that took place in this orphanage when
my mother and her sister were there:
Children at the Orphanage of Dongelberg, Belgium
Frieda Beker Pietrkowski 1943, Hidden in Belgium,
Mother of Felicia P. Zieff
Moshe Holtzberg – Orphan in Mumbai, India 11-08.
Yet Another Jewish Orphan.
This new little Jewish orphan touched my heart as much as my mother’s tragic story. - Felicia
I have spent the last few years arranging Holocaust Survivor and 2nd Generation events and assisting with the
annual Sheerit Hapleitah of Metropolitan Chicago Yom HaShoah commemoration. I have maintained the
ADSI members database and assisted in many capacities at ADSI events. In the year 2000, I bought my first
computer and began researching my family origins and finding out the facts regarding my relatives fates during
the Holocaust.I have been quite successful with my family research and will be happy to assist anyone who would
like to pursue their own research. Currently, I am the coordinator of the Jewishgen.org/Yizkor Book
Translation Project for my paternal grandmother's town - Zloczew, Poland. Here is the Website:
Jewishgen.org
Since February 2008, ADSI has held monthly events for our members that were rewarding and enjoyable, as well
as delicious! All our events include free Kosher refreshments. On June 29, 2008, we put together a film
event for Holocaust Survivors and Descendants. The film was YIDDISH THEATER: A LOVE STORY, about one
Survivor’s determination to keep the last Yiddish Theateropen in New York. Over 100 Survivors, Descendants,
and volunteers gathered together at Temple Judeah Mizpah in Skokie to watch the premier Chicago showing
of this beautiful movie.
In the past year, our organization also became involved in a most worthwhile fundraising effort – selling the
HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR COOKBOOK to raise desperately needed funds for a special soup kitchen called
Carmei Ha’Ir in Jerusalem. The website for this cookbook is located here: Survivor Cookbook
This book contains more than 120 stories of miraculous survival as well as a few of each survivor’s favorite
pre-war recipes. The stories will capture your heart and the recipes will remind you of the foods our parents made
when we were children, such as herring with tomatoes and sliced onions, eaten with rye bread smeared with
butter. Oy, my mouth is watering! If you would like to buy one or more of the HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR
COOKBOOK at $36 each (shipping included), please contact me by e-mail: tzippy_chs@sbcglobal.net
or phone: 847-674-5189. You will love this book and it makes a great gift! I have already sold more than 75
cookbooks!
To sum up, like Moses, it took me 40 years of wandering to be able to deal with the whole huge thing called
the HOLOCAUST. This past Hanukah was the first time I decided to light our menorahs by the front window of our
home. In years past, we only lit them by the back windows. The inherited fear lasts a long time after the
Holocaust. Today, I am proud of my survivor parents and proud to be living a Jewish life!
Zei Gezunt!
Felicia P. Zieff
President
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